Episode #20
20. Jamaica Slicer - Budburst
Jamaica Slicer spent 15 years as a go-to-market practitioner before she and her co-founder Brian noticed the same frustrating pattern from opposite sides of the table. Early-stage startups desperately needed experienced go-to-market talent. Experienced go-to-market talent kept choosing established companies that could pay more. It was a cycle nobody could break from inside. Their answer was Budburst , a go-to-market consulting cooperative that scales seasoned experts across multiple startups at once. They gave themselves three to six months to see if the idea had legs. They had their first client within a month. Three years later, three of their client companies have exited successfully, and every single client has come through word of mouth. This conversation is a practical clinic for anyone leading through a messy growth period. Jamaica is direct about the traps: the founder who keeps attending every sales meeting because the knowledge lives only in their head, the leader who climbs into the ivory tower and stops operating, the sales team told to "go generate pipeline" with no targets and no playbook. In this episode: The biggest go-to-market misconception, and why superior products get outsold every day Building a cooperative that works for people at every career stage, including one teammate who works five hours a week between fishing trips The first-year surprise nobody saw coming: how VC and private equity relationships became their entire growth engine, and the integrity lines they drew before it started Why documentation is the first system crack Jamaica looks for, and how a game of telephone breaks a growing sales team Building your own goals with metrics attached instead of waiting for someone to hand them to you How to hold a high standard without creating fear, silence, or burnout, including the 15-minute debrief her team runs after every important customer meeting The signals that tell you it's time to change rooms, not just change roles Jamaica's answer to our title question: making more time. Her reason for it, including what scared her about the idea of retirement, is worth sitting with. Find Jamaica Slicer on LinkedIn , and learn more about Budburst at https://budburst.io Find Billy on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bigeyedfisch/ or visit his website, billyfischer.focalpointcoaching.com.
